Description: America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11. He shows how fear, hubris, and power influenced Bush's approach to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the core of Leffler's account is his compelling portrait of Saddam Hussein. Rather than stressing Bush's preoccupation with promoting freedom or democracy, Leffler emphasizes Hussein's brutality, opportunism, and unpredictability and illuminates how the Iraqi dictator's record of aggression and intransigence haunted the president and influenced his calculations. Throughout, Leffler highlights the harrowing anxieties surrounding the decision-making process after the devastating attack on 9/11 and explains the roles of contingency, agency, rationality, and emotion.
Brief description: Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on US relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind, which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power, which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad coedited the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is coeditor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World. Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015. He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia.